


"... and I must scream"

by lucidSeraph



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Bad Ending, Body Horror, Mind Control, Mindfuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-10
Updated: 2012-03-10
Packaged: 2017-11-01 18:19:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucidSeraph/pseuds/lucidSeraph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>with apologies to Harlan Ellison for the title.</p>
<p>What if Joker hadn't escaped the bad ending of Mass Effect 2? What if Cerberus had not arrived in time? </p>
<p>This fic was originally written for a contest run by user handgimp at the Penny Arcade forums; it was the winning entry. </p>
<p>Note: While there is no explicit violence in this fic, there is significant implied violence and Creepy Stuff. You've been warned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"... and I must scream"

Darkness.

But also, awareness.

She is aware, barely, of how she is being changed. Of wires running through her skin, of alterations being made to her flesh, to her bones, to everything she is.

_No_

        It was bad enough to awaken to Cerberus, to feel her enemy ( _Akuze was their doing no don’t touch me get away from me GET AWAY_ ) restitching her bones and flesh, but this is worse, for she can feel them restitching her _mind_. She screams against it but she cannot stop it, she struggles but her limbs do not obey. She is held, still and silent, in the vast belly of this abomination.

        It comes to her through the cavernous maze of wire and bent and twisted flesh that is this aberrant cyst of a ship, dreaming through a Collector body as it reaches forward to place a claw upon her face (a face now bent with pieces of steel, now with eyes that focus with apertures and cogs). Were she able to move, she would lash out, bite that hand, do something, _anything_ —

But in the end, wasn't it her fault? Everything came down to her actions. She'd gone too fast, not thinking, not being sensitive to the burdens of those around her. She had become lost in that sense of urgency, bent on finishing it all as quickly as possible. They were in a race against time, were they not? Collectors taking human colonies day by day, seeping like a virus across the cosmos. They didn't have _time_ to gather resources, to put petty upgrades on the ship (the Normandy flew fast and fine enough as it was), and they _certainly_ didn't have time to work through everyone's personal problems. There were only two goals: stop the Collectors, and save humankind.

That speed had cost her too dearly. No one had trusted her. No one had trusted each other. The strength they'd had fighting Saren... it was shattered, broken, just as the Normandy had been broken, just as she had been broken, and unlike her there was no strange science to repair broken friendships. Not with her running from planet to planet, dragging people with her without asking why or if they were even right in their heads. Then the mission itself... Leigon, burned to death in the vents, Miranda's biotics simply not strong enough to hold the barrier despite insisting that she could do it, the rest of the crew overwhelmed by the Collectors, Grunt cut down trying to escort civilians back to the ship, the crew liquified as food for that _thing_ , and that _thing_... it was just too strong. With all that blood on her hands, with all those she loved lost, she let go, and fell from the ship, Joker reaching for her as she did... and she was aware just long enough to see a Collector beam split the Normandy...

“ **We have sought you for so long, Shepard** ,” it hisses, leaning the avatar's face too close to her wire-cocooned body, “ **For we have never seen a creature as dangerous as you.** ”  
At least they escaped this, she thinks. At least they died. I gave them that much. At least they died.

Harbinger does not laugh. She would feel better if it did. It does not even tilt the avatar's head, or bother to emote. It has no use for such things. Its voice reverberates through her, singing in her head as well as in her ears (does she even have ears now? She isn't certain any longer).

“ **No,** ” it says, its words shredding her thoughts as it reverberates through her mind, “ **Are you truly so naiive as to think that we would have left such a resource as the bodies of your compatriots behind? You are not useful to us alone. You work through groups, a hive, a network; a singular consciousness supported by many parts. Just as we are.** ”

No.

_No_. It would have been one thing for her, but to hear that her friends too are somewhere in this vast charnel house (wires snaking into her, into them like maggots, wriggling into crevices of brain matter, replacing nerves), her friends who she failed so badly are, no, no, no no no she won't think about that think about them cut open and reborn screaming in their heads as they and then

she can feel them

they've been there all along, just in the back of her head, also screaming

And that's what does it. That's what breaks her, causes her to summon up all her strength, causes her to build all her rage to a burning point and to force it; she cannot scream and she cannot move so she builds all that pressure and hurls it in her thoughts against Harbinger, trying to beat it out of her mind, trying to _hurt him burn him KILL HIM_ —

She might as well be a fly trying to fell an elephant.

“ **This hurts you, Shepard,** ” it says as all that fury breaks against the cold black walls of its mind, washing back and receding into despair. “ **Know that we will show them honor. They, like you, will not be mere husks. You are all to be uplifted. Perfected.** ”

She can feel her compatriots clearer now, their minds linking; she can feel them begging her to do something, she can feel them equally understanding that no. Here and now, she's failed them (and they forgive her and that is perhaps the worst thing of all)

Within it all remains that one question.

_Why me? Why us?_

“ **A foolish question. Why you? It is patently obvious, even in your inferior, yet to be perfected state. You are magnetic in your personality; you are a legend, you are the center, a point on which the whole of your pitiful civilization turns. You are a lynchpin, and, as I said, the other minds you have gathered are your network, your support. Remove you from the equation, and things fall apart around you; remove your compatriots, and you are only alone...** ”

It finally moves the avatar away, clicking its claws; and after what feels like an eternity, the cables slide out of her and her wounds close. She realizes then, as an alien force within her mind twitches her metal-and-flesh-fused muscles so she stands that though inside she is poison and madness there are two terrible things: the first, that a small part of her _still knows who she is_ (and so it is true of everyone else with her in her head) and worse, that externally she looks as she has always. The thing is repeated across, they all look as they have always looked.

For once, they have been subtle. Terribly subtle. 

“ **We will return you. We will return your ship. We will return your crew. You will return to your people a conquering hero, the miraculous Shepard, capable of surviving all things. And when the time is right, then you will open your arms and from the sky we will fall to greet you. Perhaps, in the end, when we reclaim you, we will give you the honor of being used to birth our young.** ”

Her legs are moved to take her to the waiting Normandy, and she can hear her companions in her head and yet they all move and talk as though nothing was wrong, Reaper minds playing them like puppets, pulling their memories and forcing them to act as they always has. She has a mouth, but the words she speaks say nothing of what has just occurred; she simply asks Joker to take them out, she gives a smile to Garrus (even as she can hear them, all of them in her head and how they all think what they _really_ feel)

She has a mouth, yet she cannot scream.


End file.
